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Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots
Punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants. Hookers, stooges, grifters and goons. Men and women, elderly and adolescent, rich and poor, but mostly poor. These are the Least Wanted. Their portraits make up a small part of Mark Michaelson's collection of over 10,000 American mugshots from the 1870s to the 1960s. Created as utilitarian instruments, and meant to be destroyed when obsolete, they survive as remnants of a bygone era of hard-copy originals, extraordinary visual windows on the past, and riveting physical artifacts, often accompanied by municipal ephemera. They are glued to cards and manuscripts, typed on and rubber stamped. Each suspect has been measured and fingerprinted, documented and classified. Bored, sheepish, proud, coy, tough, defiant, bounced, bloodied, bruised, broken and innocent faces--innocent until proven guilty--stare back at the camera with unmistakable individuality. This is central casting for the Late Late Show of unvarnished reality, and the lineup is full of small-timers, those who have fallen through the cracks. Each subject, each image, is a person, a portrait, a trace, a crime, a clue, a moment, an expression, a frame, a mustache, a mother, a father, a son or a daughter. Each image is evidence, documentation. A record of people and of stories dismissed by history and rescued here. A century of American souls, filed and forgotten, until now. Least Wanted has been exhibited at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York and at House of Love & Dissent in Rome, Italy.
Media Coverage for Least Wanted |
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Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art promotes public awareness, understanding, and appreciation of intuitive and outsider art through education, exhibition, collecting and publishing. Intuit defines ‘intuitive and outsider art’ as the work of artists who demonstrate little influence from the mainstream art world, and who instead are motivated by their unique personal vision. This definition includes art brut, non-traditional folk art, self-taught art, and visionary art. |
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